What I Saw in Dallas: A Report From the 2018 Southern Baptist Convention
First things first: Southern Baptists aren’t like other denominations. The most significant distinction is the nature of voluntary cooperation. The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) does not have a (official) hierarchy. Heck, the SBC isn’t even really a denomination — at least not in the Mainline Protestant sense. Each SBC church owns its own property. Each SBC church controls its individual church practices and pastoral staff. The SBC is different because it is a group of churches who have decided to voluntarily cooperate.
How do they cooperate? They pool their collective resources and then distribute them around a common cause — telling people about Jesus. They use these funds to send missionaries, plant churches, fund seminaries, and engage the culture.
And our church — Houston Northwest — is part of the SBC.
Once a year the member churches gather for two days and take care of business. Each member church sends delegates — known as “messengers” — and participates in a very large two-day business meeting. As part of that meeting, they hear reports from the institutions they fund and they vote on matters of business.
I (and several others) were messengers to this year’s SBC in Dallas this week.
